Academics

Lisa Lebduska

Professor of English

Director of College Writing

Degrees

Ph.D., M.A., University of Rhode Island
M.S., Long Island University
A.B., Duke University

Main Interests

My dream, passion and near-obsession is to cultivate further the long-standing and rich commitment to the teaching of writing here at Wheaton. As we develop our writing program, my interest is to enhance our notion of "composition" as a disciplinary field, produced by the intellect as well as the spirit, reproduced through scholarship as well as classroom practice, and thoroughly charged by the politics of the everyday.

"Consortia as Sites of Inquiry: Steps toward a National Portrait of Writing Program Administration." Journal of Writing ProgramAdministration. (Spring 2009). With Jill Gladstein and Dara Rossman Regaignon.

Student Projects

History major Sara Liu and I completed a 2016 survey of what students understand about writing in their majors, with the support of a Wheaton Research Partners grant. We will use these data to inform a proposal for an interdisciplinary minor in writing.

I advised Honors Thesis writer Evelyn Fisher ('15) as she researched and composed "The Perks of Writing Fan Fiction: The FanFiction.Net Community and The Perks of Being a Wallflower"

A Mellon Foundation summer research grant supported work with Hailey Heston ('17) researching photos of writing technologies as part of a born digital project on teaching writing in electronic environments.

A Writing Research Partners (WRP) grant allowed me to work with Mengyang (Vicky) Li ('14) producing short videos serving as the central image of a Voicethread inviting students to comment on the challenges of writing. I presented this project at the Writing Program Administrators conference in Albuquerque 2012.

Supported by a WRP grant, I worked with students Alexander Bandazian ('09) and Anna Lyczmanenko ('10) to research the ways in which veterans returning from World War II impacted college writing curricula. Sophie Howard ('14) continued that research with me. Three presentations and two articles resulted from this research. One of the articles has been published in the journal Open Words; a second article, focusing on the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, was published in Literacy in Composition Studies.